In the battle of the grocery store ice creams, I’ve narrowed it down to two champions.
First, honey salted caramel almond. It’s got crunchy almond bits, ribbons of caramel that really hits, and the honey ice cream base is fire.
And on the chocolate side of things is phish food. Chocolate ice cream with ribbons of marshmallow and little chocolate fish for that chew factor. I guess this one’s a stone cold classic already.
And I just bounce between these two til death do us part.
I’ve become someone with a rigid routine. Same meals for lunch and dinner, same bus and train schedules. Gotta control something in a world that feels chaotic, you know.
My Saturday meals (satmeals) are the highlight of this rigid life structure. Salad, soup, cheese, bread, beer, dessert. SSCBBD.
Salad is almost always a large caesar salad. The importance of the sharpness or tanginess of caesar salad dressing cannot be overstated. A real tongue whip, smack to the senses. The lettuce is the means to deliver that flavor, and along with the croutons forms the textural foundation. The extra cotija or parmesan brings it home. This is the church around which I developed my devotion to this idol, the satmeal.
Soup is jambalaya when available, minestrone when it’s not. Wholesome, filling, and something about these feels homey and inviting, like my mom’s heavily tomato-based Mexican home cooking. I always think I should try a chowder or potato leek, but those cream-based soups never quite scratch the soup itch.
Cheese always refers to a softball-sized ball of fresh mozzarella. Unlike the sharp cheese flavors from the salad, the fresh mozzarella is more subtle, and not as excessive or heavy as a ball of cheese might sound. It’s like eating a lightly salted cloud. Calvin Trillin’s “Mozzarella Story” brought these into my life and while I’ve yet to attain the authenticity of Trillin’s mozzarella tales, I don’t believe one can go wrong with a ball of fresh mozzarella. The smoked variant is my favorite.
Bread is where I feel I’m lacking. In keeping with my approach to the mozzarella, I like to handle these with my hands. Just a roll of bread (or two), torn apart by hand and dunked into the soup. No knives, no butters or spreads. I’m absolutely trying to be a man I’m not, but it still feels good and of the moment. The lacking aspect is I don’t go to a bakery to grab fresh bread, and perhaps I should. Wouldn’t you?
Beer, I can’t believe this one. I very clearly remember not caring about beer. Now I do and I’m flummoxed. It’s always a single serving, a stovepipe can. Never the cheap stuff that tastes like skunk (where did that idea come from?) Almost always a pale ale which, let me say, isn’t exactly a fine flavor either, and yet it feels essential to have a good, hardy, strong beer as part of the meal. With so much food in here, and a deliberately carefree sense of fuck it, there isn’t even an edge to take off. I guess, yeah, sometimes a beer is just a beer.
Finally, and critically, I became a cake man. Like beer, I used to relegate cake to the lowest rung of stuff I want to eat. I’d take any pie, and certainly a flan or custard, over a slice of cake. Then I met tuxedo truffle cake. Imagine your standard, dry layers of pointless cake, then replace most of those layers with chocolate and vanilla mousse, top it with chocolate ganache, and add a side of more chocolate mousse for good measure. I wasn’t just a cake avoider, but I also barely cared about chocolate. This cake brought it all together, wove something special out of elements that could not stand alone. And sometimes, if the mood is right and the time allows, I instead grab a pint of honey salted-caramel roasted-almond ice cream, as decadent as the word count implies.
I can be mercurial enough that this won’t matter in a year or five, but at this point in time there are satmeals and the process of piecing together a perfect moment.
I’ve become someone with a rigid routine. Same meals for lunch and dinner, same bus and train schedules. Gotta control something in a world that feels chaotic, you know.
My Saturday meals (satmeals) are the highlight of this rigid life structure. Salad, soup, cheese, bread, beer, dessert. SSCBBD.
Salad is almost always a large caesar salad. The importance of the sharpness or tanginess of caesar salad dressing cannot be overstated. A real tongue whip, smack to the senses. The lettuce is the means to deliver that flavor, and along with the croutons forms the textural foundation. The extra cotija or parmesan brings it home. This is the church around which I developed my devotion to this idol, the satmeal.
Soup is jambalaya when available, minestrone when it’s not. Wholesome, filling, and something about these feels homey and inviting, like my mom’s heavily tomato-based Mexican home cooking. I always think I should try a chowder or potato leek, but those cream-based soups never quite scratch the soup itch.
Cheese always refers to a softball-sized ball of fresh mozzarella. Unlike the sharp cheese flavors from the salad, the fresh mozzarella is more subtle, and not as excessive or heavy as a ball of cheese might sound. It’s like eating a lightly salted cloud. Calvin Trillin’s “Mozzarella Story” brought these into my life and while I’ve yet to attain the authenticity of Trillin’s mozzarella tales, I don’t believe one can go wrong with a ball of fresh mozzarella. The smoked variant is my favorite.
Bread is where I feel I’m lacking. In keeping with my approach to the mozzarella, I like to handle these with my hands. Just a roll of bread (or two), torn apart by hand and dunked into the soup. No knives, no butters or spreads. I’m absolutely trying to be a man I’m not, but it still feels good and of the moment. The lacking aspect is I don’t go to a bakery to grab fresh bread, and perhaps I should. Wouldn’t you?
Beer, I can’t believe this one. I very clearly remember not caring about beer. Now I do and I’m flummoxed. It’s always a single serving, a stovepipe can. Never the cheap stuff that tastes like skunk (where did that idea come from?) Almost always a pale ale which, let me say, isn’t exactly a fine flavor either, and yet it feels essential to have a good, hardy, strong beer as part of the meal. With so much food in here, and a deliberately carefree sense of fuck it, there isn’t even an edge to take off. I guess, yeah, sometimes a beer is just a beer.
Finally, and critically, I became a cake man. Like beer, I used to relegate cake to the lowest rung of stuff I want to eat. I’d take any pie, and certainly a flan or custard, over a slice of cake. Then I met tuxedo truffle cake. Imagine your standard, dry layers of pointless cake, then replace most of those layers with chocolate and vanilla mousse, top it with chocolate ganache, and add a side of more chocolate mousse for good measure. I wasn’t just a cake avoider, but I also barely cared about chocolate. This cake brought it all together, wove something special out of elements that could not stand alone. And sometimes, if the mood is right and the time allows, I instead grab a pint of honey salted-caramel roasted-almond ice cream, as decadent as the word count implies.
I can be mercurial enough that this won’t matter in a year or five, but at this point in time there are satmeals and the process of piecing together a perfect moment.